And The Blind Shall Lead The Way
by Sythe
Summary: Malcolm and Leandra Hawke's firstborn is a peculiar child. Some would say that for a blind little girl, she sees more than those many years her seniors. Seer!Hawke. Canon at first but slowly diverges from the game plotline as Hawke, gifted with peeks of the tumultuous future, refuses to just lie down and be walked all over by fate.


Disclaimer: If I owned Dragon Age 2, we would have a drastically different game. Sadly… I don't

Summary: Malcolm and Leandra Hawke's firstborn is a peculiar child. Some would say that for a blind little girl, she sees more than those many years her seniors. Seer!Hawke. Canon at first but slowly diverges from the game plotline as Hawke, gifted with peeks of the tumultuous future, refuses to just lie down and be walked all over by fate. A Hawke that truly embraces her destiny and wrestles power from the world instead of letting herself be dictated by the mass.

**Prologue: A Miracle**

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><p>Marian Hawke wasn't born blind.<p>

She was born a beautiful, healthy baby girl with a full head of sable black hair. On the morn of winter in a backwater Ferelden village, amidst the stink of mud and wet dog and the sounds of a farmer village waking up to the first snow of October, she bellowed her first cry, loud and full of life.

It was love at first sight for both Malcolm and Leandra.

Despite her father's magic and the always-on-the-run family lifestyle, the girl had a more or less happy, if somewhat lonely childhood. Her parents doted upon her with the desperation of those who knew full well that their time together was limited. When she turned six, the entire family settled down in Lothering, a small Ferelden village discreetly known among the apostates for its kind templars and its leniency upon mages. There, Leandra bore the twins, the boy Carver and the girl Bethany and for but a brief moment they hoped for a quiet but joyful life.

A year later, little Hawke came down with a fever. It was only a child's bug, said the village herbs women. Nothing to worry about. 'Tis the season and the young 'un had been spotted frolicking around in the fields during rainy days. Those little tykes were plenty resilient yes but so much mucking about in the mud and snow was bound to land her in bed for a week or two. But no more. It would soon pass, they said.

But the fever did not stop. It kept on for another three weeks the end of which saw the girl unable to keep anything in her stomach. Now truly alarmed, her parents packed up the twin babies and sought the help of better qualified doctors in the nearby town of Mahindras. They quickly found one who was able to recognize the illness for what it was, but by that time, it was already too late. The illness had ravaged much of the girl's body and even after many coins spent and an intensive two months treatment, nothing they did could salvage the light of her eyes.

At eight years old, the child Hawke became blind.

In some way, little Hawke's sudden loss of vision was a wake up call for her parents. Lothering, pretty as a painting, had done a wonderful job of lulling them into a sense of complacency, of hope that a bright future would come easy. They had been a young couple in love, heady in the throes of joy and hard-earned freedom. There had been hardships on the way of course, but insofar, the darker part of the world had not reached their children. Hatred, bigotry, the cruelty of the ignorant masses had not lain its hands upon the heads of these innocents. Not yet.

Perhaps they had been naive in thinking children would be spared. But theirs was not an easy time. It was one of strife, chaos, and violence and it did not distinguish between the innocent and the sinful. To believe otherwise would be tantamount to lying to oneself.

The first night they came home, Malcolm held a sobbing Leandra and said nothing to her quiet whispering.

"But how will she live, my love? Our sweet daughter. This land is tough enough and we cannot protect her forever. What if she has your magic, Malcolm? A blind mage? A blind apostate?"

… in a world whose god condemned her existence.

In the face of this future, for but a moment he felt helpless. But Malcolm, for all his faults and human weakness, had never been one to easily give up… if he did so at all. He was a man of great love and consequently, of great courage. Leandra did not mention her brief moment of weakness the morning after, preferring to face adversity in her usual quiet, stubborn way. Her response to her daughter's blindness: a Mabari pup, a war hound in the making, bought as a seeing eye dog for little Hawke.

"You will never be alone, my sweet. Not even when you cannot see those who stand beside you," she said and proceeded to teach her daughter the written language of the blind.

Malcolm, unlike his unmagical wife, contemplated solutions of the arcane realm. Were he any other ordinary man, he would be satisfied with what Leandra had in store for their first child. But he was not. Here was a man who partook in blood magic and forbidden arts of the highest order all to protect his budding family, his little piece of sanctuary in this world of chaos and heartbreak.

There were spirit healers capable of curing even his daughter's eyes, this he knew without a doubt. But healers of such caliber were all kept under the Chantry and the Order of Templar's lock and key. Unless he wanted to bring their wrath upon his young wife and the rest of his children, he would have to keep them as a last resort.

And, since Malcolm was no healer, the only immediate solution, then, was his daughter's own magic.

He said nothing of his plan to Leandra.

Young mages could manifest their abilities anywhere from as young as six to as old as eighteen. If Marian didn't have magic, then his plans came to a moot point. But even if she did indeed have the gift, then it was a mere spark, too young to yet do anything, and now it would only herald a difficult future.

Many would call Malcolm's plan as grasping as straws… but if there was even the slightest possibilities, then he had to try. It was his duty as father.

One day, in the shy of spring, he brought the girl into the woods at the back of their Lothering house, and there amidst the melting snow and springing buds, told her of magic, of its wonders and its curses. This was the first of a string of secret lessons from father to daughter that would keep on for many years yet. If they knew, his peers would call him mad, reckless, a menace to his own family. The little Hawke might be too young. The little Hawke might not even have magic. The little Hawke, as many young mage children did, might unknowingly unleash a demon upon her own family. But they were not here and Malcolm...

… Malcolm Hawke sought to create a miracle.

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><p>It was difficult to ascertain what Malcolm Hawke had been hoping for. A solution to his daughter's blind eyes and vulnerability yes. But in what way?<p>

Did he hope to make a spirit healer out of the little girl? Did he hope to make an earth based elemental mage who would have no need for eyes in the fleshly realm? Either way, it did not matter.

Magic, so misunderstood by the ignorant mass, was a living force with a mind of its own. It was not the dead, static power that mages of the circle tended to think it was. It was neither an exact science nor a set of unbreakable rules set in stone.

More often than not, it grew and answered to the needs and imagination of its host. It was the reason why many hedge mages, lacking the doctrine of the Circle, tended to develop unique talents and powers the Circle mages could only dream of.

The free mage Malcolm knew this and it was the reason why he had hope. From that day, his daughter's blindness had dictated her life. Her magic, if she had it, would grow to become the perfect answer to her physical limitation.

So he taught her everything he knew, all the while retaining all of his limitations. He told her fantastical stories of all powerful mages who could rearrange the world and cross the barriers of the physical planes at will. He sang her the wild tales of the Chasind and the Avvar, and the myths of the lost elven empire Elvhenan. He gave her no limits, no impossibilities. He forbade her nothing. He wanted her to dream, to envision, to imagine. Adults had fear and doubts and knew their limits and the limits of the world. Children did not. To them, the world itself was a wondrous place of limitless potential just waiting to be discovered. It mattered not that the little Hawke dreamed of impossible things because her young, formless magic, unbound by the prejudice of the Circle, would make all of it real.

It would be the child's boundless power to imagine that would set her free.

One day, the little Hawke dreamed of seeing the world. But not in the way that adults would. An eye opened within her… and beheld the universe.

* * *

><p>It started from something innocuous. A little thing, almost dismissed as happenstance. A dream. No, less than a dream. Fleeting images that passed so swiftly between the waking realms that the little Hawke nearly forgot about them.<p>

The fields behind Lothering, blue with the blossoms of the Jacaranda. The flower was new, a non-native species recently brought into the fields by a local herbs woman on a whim. She hadn't told many and even in a village as small as Lothering, talk of the new flower in town rated low in the local rumor mill. By all right, the little Hawke should not even know of it. But she did, and more, mentioned it over breakfast to her parents.

"The flowers behind the mill are pretty. Can you get them for me, papa?"

"What flowers, dear?" Said Malcolm, puzzled, for the local flower season would not arrive but for another month.

"The blue ones, right behind old man Barlin's shed, in the fields, near the trees and the lake. They are so pretty, papa, and they smell lovely. Like melted vanilla," said little Marian Hawke.

"I'm… not sure if we have any blue flowers this season, darling…" Leandra chipped in, mildly concerned. As far as Leandrea knew, they didn't have any blue flowers in this region period. She could be wrong of course, being no herbs woman herself, but the fact that the statement came from her blind daughter of all people was startling. For a moment, she let it show in her voice.

"Well never you fear my princess…" Malcolm cut in the second he detected a faint hint on his daughter's face. Shooting Leandra a look, he said. "I'll take a look and if I see them blue flowers, papa will get you a whole cart to fill your room with."

So he went where his daughter bade, and there among the grass and the weeds by the river coast, he found the Jacaranda blooming brilliantly.

He came back to his daughter then, bringing with him a cart of blue blossoms as he promised, and that night, as her mother weaved the flowers into her hair and the hair of little Bethany, he asked. "How did you know they were there?"

"I saw them, papa…" said Hawke, "... in my dream."

That was the first warning.

Now, to the common unmagical folks, this would be nothing more than a child's whimsical tale, a coincidence so to speak. But any family with a mage in it knew differently. The world of dreams was no mere fantasy of the mind. It was another realm, where the world behaved differently. The origin of the mage's gift… as well as their curse. Such a simple answer that came from a child no more than eleven, yet it lit up all the warning signals in Malcolm's head.

That day, aside from a shared look with his wife, Malcolm said nothing.

Then came the second incidence. Again, a small one. The child Hawke asking in the morning if her papa would please get her that new sweet smelling pastry from the tavern. The cook had been experimenting with the new dough, she said, but old man Barlin did not like the taste so they were selling it as a discount, unannounced. Malcolm went, and again, found the pastry as his daughter predicted.

Then came third incidence, and the fourth, and by then, there was no doubting the evidences. His daughter was gifted with magic—just like her father—and in her, the gift had manifested in a most wondrous but also most dangerous way.

Malcolm came clean to Leandra, about his secret lessons and his hopes, and the very real possibility of their daughter being a true seer.

"How could you hide this from me?" shouted Leandra at first, the maternal fear overwhelming everything else. "She is my daughter! There's not supposed to be any secrets between us."

She shouted. He soothed. They talked, quietly through the night. They had not dared to have this conversation anywhere that could be overheard by the children or the townsfolk, so they stood in the forest and conversed in hushed, harsh tones. Finally, she calmed down… somewhat.

"Are you absolutely sure?" Leandra pressed. "I have never heard of a seer mage in my life. I thought all those old wives tales about the Rivaini oracles were… just that. Old wives tales."

"Technically, the ability is called clairvoyance by the circle mages. Oracles and seers are terms coined by the common folks, and yes, the oracles of Rivain are very real. I have never personally met any of them before, but I have heard of them during my travel. I know little of their abilities except that it requires intense training and conditioning since childhood to even utilize the lowest of the discipline abilities," explained Malcolm. "There are seers who train their entire lives just for small, inconsequential glimpses of the day after."

"What does that mean?" Leandra asked. "Our daughter never had any training."

"It means, my dear, that our child has a gift that may surpass those that walk the halls of Rivaini circles. It is a great and terrible gift. It will help her so much… but if others know of it, those who are too ambitious to let such wonderful gift pass them by, then she will never be free."

He looked down, closed his hands around hers, up. "It means… that we need to protect her… and her secret. We need to teach her how to use her gift and protect herself."

So it began.

* * *

><p>In the shy of summer, where the last snow of spring had melted away to make place for the honey of full sunlight and the gentle countryside breeze, Malcolm began new lessons.<p>

Instead of fanciful tales and deep contemplation, these lessons came with steels and knives.

"You must learn the way of the sword, my child" he told unto the little Hawke.

"But I have magic. Shouldn't I start with… I don't know… staves instead?" The little Hawke frowned as she clumsily fingered the dagger handed to her, her movements jerky with hesitation.

"While it is true that a staff is the mage's best weapon, it is also true that an apostate whose status is identified so easily by the weapon of her choice has thrice the chances of being captured. You do not want that do you?"

"... No"

"Then you must learn the play of swords," stated Malcolm as he closed his hand around the much smaller hand of his daughter, righting the grip on her dagger. "Remember my sweet, your greatest defense is secrecy. Your greatest weapon is the mystery of your abilities. If your foe does not know what you can do nor the source of your power, he is powerless against you. If by holding the daggers, you deceive your enemies into thinking you a rogue, then they will not expect the bite of magic at your command."

"But… but… I can't see!" She turned her eyes, wet and glistening and impossibly beautiful, at him.

"You are blind, yes. But that does not mean you cannot see." Gently, he guided her, the patient father and teacher to a fearful, uncertain daughter. "Your magic is your eyes. You can see in your dreams do you not? Do not cage its vision with the bias of the mind. Let it fly free. If you have enough faith in yourself, you can do anything. Command your magic and it shall show you the world."

Slowly, he guided her hands into the first swing, her feet into the first stance, angled her body just so. Then the second swing, slow and clumsy but with the barest arc to hint at the grace the movement required. And they moved, slowly, step by step, and danced.

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><p>The gift grew, slowly, so slowly, but it never stopped. The dreams became more vivid, more distant in time and location both. Until they came even during the waking, an invisible tremor in the air, ghostly glimpses of things that could be.<p>

Hawke turned seventeen. At an age where life should have been sweet, hers was one of constant and maddening visions.

"Yours is a wonderful and terrible gift, my sweet. You cannot let it control you," her father had always said.

Hawke turned nineteen, then twenty. She feared the visions that came unbidden to her and were more often than not confused about the state of the world and where she fit in. She could dance a beautiful, deadly dance with her twin daggers, but the dangers that lurked in her mind weren't ones she could stick a knife to.

When Hawke turned twenty-two, Malcolm died, of sickness. He left with a smile. Holding the hands of his children close, he said. "Do not grieve for me, my love. Instead, rejoice in the happy times we shared."

Regardless of his wish, Malcolm's death created a rift between Leandra and her eldest daughter.

"Great gift, he said," she whispered once to Marian, in a voice harsh and ugly with grief. "You could not even see his death coming. Why didn't you see? Why didn't you warn me?"

Hawke turned twenty-four and she and Carver enlisted into the Ferelden army. Her blind eyes garnered notice, but a good soldier is a good soldier. And soon, it would not matter.

Hawke turned twenty-five. The Blight hit Ferelden. In the night before the tragedy at Ostagar, Hawke pulled Carver by the hands and hair and together they ran from the inescapable massacre. They came home, weary and exhausted, but the fear fueled even tired bodies. The Blighted horde was on their heels and they would not wait. Sparing only half a day to gather their most valuables, they fled, to Kirkwall.

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><p><strong>End Prologue<strong>

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><p>1. This fic was created as my response towards the missed opportunity that is Dragon Age 2. I wanted to create a Hawke that lived up to the ambition of the 'Rise to Power' trailer and the 'Destiny' trailer. A Hawke that would not lay down and let destiny and the people around her walk all over her. One that took destiny with her own two hands and decided her fate by herself. A champion that is not a busy body running errands for just about everyone in Kirkwall, but a powerful political figure with an entire House of Hawke behind her. An underworld don of sort.<p>

2. I started this fic around 2-3 weeks ago, intending to execute a premise I've always been fascinated by, the power of clairvoyance and how it interacts with plot lines.

3. Unfortunately I started playing Dragon Age Inquisition since the day of its premier and just speed rushed through it yesterday. The new storyline and the many many plot lines offered in Inquisition pretty much put the kaboosh to my enthusiasm for this fic (though by that time I'd already completed most of the fic). So I'm just putting it up here as a way to gauge people's interest in this premise. High chances are I won't come back but I do already have a plotline prepared. If anyone wants to adopt this fic or want to work with this premise, inbox me and I will share the plot elements I have in mind so far.

4. Now Ima off to write this new post-finale Dragon Age Inquisition Solavellan fic idea I have in my head. Ahh! Excitement!


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